The Wellington Project: Violet Lousick

As part of Reconciliation Week, we're featuring some of the people involved with the 'Wellington' project. Wellington Aboriginal leader, Violet Lousick, reflects on her family history, reconciliation and the importance of unifying the community.

"The Wellington Project is two years of research and consultation with the local Wiradjuri community to write their histories into the official history of Wellington," explains creator, Matt Gallois.

Violet Lousick is one of the most well known and loved Aboriginal leaders in the Wellington community, of which she's been a resident for over sixty years.

As a young girl, Violet and her mother spent many years moving around the Dandaloo area - amid fears that "light skinned" Violet would be a prime candidate for 'removal' and 'assimilation' into white Australian society.

"They wanted to take the half-caste kids away and put them in homes at that stage. So, she hid me out in the bush and we travelled around so that's why I didn't get much schooling," Violet explains.

At the age of 14 after moving to Dubbo, Violet started work at the local hospital. In a garden over the river, where many Aboriginal people in the community worked, Violet would meet her future husband, Bill.

Settling in Wellington around 1945, the couple married and went on to raise their children there.

Operating their market garden provided produce for the local community and abroad. It also provided an important source of employment for the local Indigenous community.

"We were happy to keep the people fed and knew that they were happy.

"In those times, there'd be all working. Today there's nothing for people here no more, the gardeners, there's only about one that's left now. It's sad to see the way it is."

Reflecting on then and now, Violet explains living circumstances and daily life during that time.

"We lived in a big tin shed. Sometimes it would flood and we'd have to be rowed out on boats. Somewhere I've got...us being rowed out in a boat in the middle of the night. It was very hard.

"People don't think how hard it was in those days."

"Everyone did work in those days and we used to go out and pick them up, drive the big truck out to the mission and bring them in. It was nothing to have about fifty people on the truck. They were sitting around, just to get them to work.

"That was their means of support. We'd help them and they'd help us out in the gardens."

Later on, while working at the local hospital, Violet would again be compelled to help those in the community, after witnessing the difference in care being provided to Aboriginal patients.

"Our women weren't treated real good up there. There was a part that Aboriginal people had to go and have their babies. I thought, now that's funny because our people taught us we were as good as anyone else.

"Coming into a town, they were sort of...Aboriginals down that end and the white people up the other end."

After suffering a stroke, Violet had her mother admitted as an in-patient border to provide necessary care.

"She was paralysed down one side. I overheard a couple of the nurses when they'd come in of a morning and say 'I'm not washing this one... she wet the bed'. Talking bad about our people."

Wiradjuri elder Joyce Williams had also been at the hospital during that period. Frustrated by the level of care they both women witnessed, they banded together in search of a solution - resulting in the establishment of a health service.

"Good things happen and a lot of bad things and it makes you determined."

Hear Violet Lousick discuss her family history, reconciliation and what's she's focused on achieving next for her community.